Bagels—Tuesdays With Dorie—Baking With Julia

First, I made the dough (half recipe, made with bread flour and no pepper as mentioned optional in the dough) late a couple nights ago and after letting it rise on the counter for an hour, it did its time in the refrigerator for the night.

The next morning, I read through the whole recipe, got everything ready and started making five perfect and delicious bagels. Though it was quite the process to get to a finished bagel, none of it was hard to do. The bagels were formed and ready for a short time in a boiling water bath.

Each bagel spent about two minutes in the water. The oven was preheating to super hot with my pizza stone in it. Some ice water was ready to throw in the bottom of the oven after setting the bagels on the pizza stone. It all went really well.

I didn’t really want savory bagels, so I sprinkled two of them with some cinnamon-sugar—

two of them were topped with a little sea salt—

and one was left plain.

These turned out nicely crisp/chewy on the outside and not to heavy/dense on the inside, they were perfectly bagel-y.

Kevin ate one of the salted bagels.

I had some yummy fun with the cinnamon bagel by dousing it in some cinnamon-sugar melted butter.

And then because I couldn’t go a week without chocolate somewhere it just only seemed right to add a little chocolate to the plain bagel to the tune of some Nutella.

I was thinking there’s no way I’d ever go through all it took to make bagels again, but they are good and it really wasn’t that bad. I think it would be fun to try them again with some other flavors. The boys (including Kevin) all whined that they only like blueberry bagels—sounds like a challenge to me and now I know where to turn for a great bagel recipe.

If you’d like the recipe, Heather from Heather Bytes is hosting this week and she’s posted the recipe. You know, if you’re one of the few who don’t have Dorie Greenspan’s Baking With Julia in your cookbook collection. ;)

Those look REALLY good. Have you ever made homemade pretzels? I've followed Alton Brown's recipe (I think..) and they follow a similar process, of boiling then baking. (No ice water involved, though.) They are soooo good. Chewy with a great flavor and texture.